Look back at John 10:28-30. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”(NIV) I have had people tell me, “I know that no one can snatch us out of His hand but we might jump out ourselves.” You would be stupid to do a thing like, but more importantly, it wouldn’t be a very strong shepherd that could allow a sheep to jump out.
James Boyce, commenting on these verses has a beautiful illustration. He says that when a carpenter has two thinner pieces of board he will take a fairly long nail and, putting the two pieces of board together, will drive a nail all the way through the boards so that it sticks out the other side. Then he will go around to the other side and take his hammer and knock down that sharp edge so it turns sideways. He says that is called “clinching the nail”. We get our phrase, “that clinches it”, from that carpenter’s analogy.
In this passage there are two nails God drives into our security, and then He clinches both of them. The first nail is in verse 28, the first part: “I give eternal life to them.” (Not for one hundred years, or until you backslide, but eternal life.) Now notice how He clinches it: “and they shall never perish.” The second nail is that no one shall snatch them out of My hand. That is the nail. Now He goes around the other side and He clinches it: “My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” That is the clincher. Isn’t that beautiful?
In the National Gallery in Scotland there is a powerful painting of a little shepherd boy holding a little lamb in his arms. The artist has cleverly, through light and shadow, made it so that when you step back from the painting and get a bigger perspective you see in the shadows what you didn’t see before. There is the little shepherd boy with a lamb securely in his arms, but around the shepherd boy are the arms of the Father, the great Shepherd, and His arms encircle both the little boy and the little lamb. The little lamb is doubly secure in the arms of the little shepherd boy and in the arms of his father. You and I, beloved, are the sheep known by God so that we are so secure that He gives eternal life to us and we shall never perish.
If faith (that one thing that is not doing anything, through which God’s salvation comes to me) is the only condition to get into Heaven, the obvious question is, “How can I know I have faith?
First of all, let’s look at some things that faith is not:
Faith is not mere wishful thinking. We use the word “hope” this way, saying “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.” That is mere wishful thinking. Sometimes we talk about “good faith. There is nothing wrong with it, but that legal term doesn’t really represent anything of biblical faith.
It is not mere religious feeling. I was talking to a man in a coffee shop once named Bill. I asked him if he had ever personally asked Jesus Christ to be his personal Savior. He said, “Yah, I am religious myself.” I said, “When did this happen?” He said, “One day I was up on a mountain side, and there was such beauty of nature, I had this great glorious feeling of peace.” “And?” “That was it. That great glorious feeling of peace.” He had a religious feeling, but not saving faith. I went on to find out he did not believe in Christ. He thought you just had to live a good life to be saved. It was a religious feeling.
It is not mere credulity or gullibility. I am convinced that some people would believe me more if I told them that I was Uncle E.T. and came from some other planet. Or that I can raise the dead and put arms back on armless people. The more outlandish the story, the more easily they will believe. A lot of the so-called miracles, angel experiences, etc. are nothing but credulity and gullibility and have nothing to do with biblical faith.
It is not optimism. A positive mental attitude is a good thing to have but that is not biblical faith. If you want to try to win over worry and you want to be successful by getting up in the morning and standing in your bedroom and shouting out three times, I believe, I believe, I believe, I won’t mind that. Maybe the people in your house will mind that, but that is fine if you want to do that. But don’t be surprised if you come to me and I ask you, what do you believe? Positive thinking, as if somehow magically I can make things happen just by believing they will happen, is not biblical faith.
Biblical faith is not a religious ritual. Faith is not your baptism, whether as a child or an adult. Faith is not walking down an aisle. Faith is not taking the Lord’s Supper. Faith is not lighting a candle. Faith is not saying prayers. Faith is not reading the Bible. Faith is not confessing to some man. Any of those may be the result and a proof of faith but they are not faith. Don’t confuse the cause and effect. They are not faith.
That brings me then to ask, “What is Biblical faith?”.
Faith is man’s response to God’s initiative. God does something; man believes; man trusts it; man is willing to act upon it; and that is faith. Faith is hanging your body on the Word of God. Faith is being willing to risk everything that God is true, even if it points out that every man is a liar. Faith is believing God in spite of circumstances. Faith is a refusal to panic. Faith is believing God and God’s Word.
So it is the response to whatever God says. If God says, “here is a promise”, faith is believing that promise. If God says, “here is a commandment”, faith is obeying that commandment. If God says, “don’t do this”, faith is not doing that. Faith is the response to God’s initiative. Therefore, it involves the intellect, emotion and will. One of the best answers to the question is in the little acrostic F A I T H , meaning Forsaking All, I Trust Him. Forsaking all your rules, religion rituals, and regulations, and not trusting in your goodness. Faith is a transference of your trust from yourself and all of your own goodness to Jesus Christ and His death on Calvary alone for your salvation. Forsaking All, I trust Him.
To be continued…
